


The Significance of Watchful Eyes

by DawnOfTomorrow



Series: The Significance of Touching Series [3]
Category: Naruto
Genre: Canon Compliant, Canonical Character Death, Gen, He sees maybe a little too much in the end, M/M, Tobirama always supports his brother, Watching a flame can be hypnotic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-22
Updated: 2018-11-22
Packaged: 2019-08-27 09:04:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,403
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16699513
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DawnOfTomorrow/pseuds/DawnOfTomorrow
Summary: Tobirama was always watching his older brother. Hashirama was the one that drew people’s eyes after all – loud, colourful, emotional and above all, powerful. He watched his older brother grow from a dreaming boy to a dreaming man. He wasn’t sure at what point his admittedly naive brother figured out the feelings he held for their enemy – possibly in the beginning, maybe never at all – but he watched silently as it happened.Still, in peace as in war, Tobirama watched over his older brother, protecting and helping where he could...consoling where he couldn’t. Madara was going to leave Konoha, their dream behind. Several times, Tobirama nearly asked, what his new dream was, what had changed and why he wanted to leave Hashirama’s village, his own village.He ended up saying nothing. His exchanges with Madara were never pleasant anyway, tended to end in fighting, screaming rather than any serious answers. He never asked. Still, much, much later, when he died his own death, he thought of Hashirama...and of Madara. He died a good death, in the end, if alone.





	The Significance of Watchful Eyes

**Author's Note:**

> This is the third part of a series of one-shots covering the feelings and dreams of Konoha's founders, featuring different viewpoints, different angles of the same part of the story. All canon-compliant...let's face it, Hashimada is as close to canon as it could be without the two of them doing it on screen.

Tobirama was always watching his older brother. Hashirama was the one that drew people’s eyes after all – loud, colourful, emotional and above all, powerful. He watched his older brother grow from a dreaming boy to a dreaming man.

Though he didn’t know it at first, he also watched his brother fall in love. Tobirama wasn’t sure at what point his admittedly naive brother figured out the feelings he held for their enemy – possibly in the beginning, maybe never at all – but he watched silently as it happened.

He didn’t speak up until it was too late. It was the most common source of arguments between them. Hashirama was loyal to a fault and blind to Madara’s faults. His brother didn’t but Tobirama saw, saw the way the man sometimes looked, saw the fire raging behind his eyes, knew deep down that it made no difference if the Sharingan was active or not.

Madara was dangerous. Grudgingly, Tobirama had to admit that he wasn’t dangerous to Hashirama...but to their dream. His eyes had always been firmly trained on his brother and his dreams, and before long the foolish idea of a village had become Tobirama’s dream as well. He supported it, put more thought into things than the other two did...and through it all, he watched.

Konoha came true in a way most dreams didn’t, and when it did, Tobirama got his wish fulfilled too – he saw his brother happy. Not just him either – the children, all of their children had a safe home. They were no longer being sent out to die. It was more than he’d ever hoped for, as much as he had defended his brother from their father’s wrath from time to time.

Not in time for Kawarama or Itama, but in time for hundreds, even thousands of others, eventually. Tobirama wouldn’t be around to see them all, but he didn’t need to be. As he’d stood on top of the newly-named Hokage mountain with his brother and Madara, half looking at Konoha, and half looking at those two, he knew without a doubt that the dream they had built would survive. He felt honoured to be part of it, however small a part it was.

It gave him peace, more peace than he’d ever really known. Still, in peace as in war, Tobirama watched over his older brother, protecting and helping where he could...consoling where he couldn’t. His love for Madara was obvious, of course, to more people than Tobirama himself would have been comfortable with had their positions been reversed...but Madara never knew.

Tobirama would have never told of course, not to either of them, that he knew what they didn’t – that something within the both of them...resonated, sometimes. Not always, not even all that often, but as the days passed in Konoha, it happened more and more often. They were strange moments of silence, of shared looks and of pauses at inopportune moments...and yet, neither seemed aware that the other saw it too.

These moments were always followed with a small surge of anger from Madara and a touch of melancholy from his brother. He understood the melancholy, he didn’t understand the anger, not at first. Years later, he understood both...and the irony of the fact that he had been the only one who had seen it right from the beginning.

Then, things changed. He didn’t know why, when or how, but he knew that Madara felt it first. The man was going to leave Konoha, their dream behind. His dream had become something else. Several times, Tobirama nearly asked, what his new dream was, what had changed and why he wanted to leave Hashirama’s village, his own village.

He had said nothing. His exchanges with Madara were never pleasant anyway, tended to end in fighting, screaming rather than any serious answers. Tobirama left dealing with the man to Hashirama – he was the one who enjoyed it anyway.

Still, every once in a while he wondered what it would be like if they didn’t fight if they could speak peacefully. He always shrugged it off – Tobirama wasn’t a dreamer, not like that anyway. Really, the laughter of children was more than enough for him.

Being the younger brother of a god wasn’t easy of course, but Tobirama relished the challenge – he had always been inquisitive after all, always been a researcher, an inventor. The peace of Konoha allowed him to really indulge his hobbies, even with the monumental amounts of work that the village was...and that his brother was.

Hashirama knew that Tobirama knew of his feelings and that he didn’t approve...but they each respected the other enough to never say a word about it. Tobirama let his brother indulge in the happiness Madara gave him, as much as it was a false happiness...

In Tobirama’s eyes, the difference wasn’t all that great anyway. He wasn’t the kind of optimist that his brother was. If pressed, Tobirama would call himself a realist...and because of that, he was keenly aware just how often his brother had proven him wrong, how often optimism had beaten out realism.

It made him smile just a little because above all, Tobirama loved his brother. He did, even when it was a little difficult to do so. It amused him to no end that the one thing in which he and Madara wholeheartedly agreed was the fact that his brother was...a fool. A complete idiot, sometimes.

It didn’t suit the god of shinobi, yet Tobirama knew he would never change and he deeply loved his brother for it.

He believed it, right up until he saw his brother change, the day he came back, Madara’s blood still on his blade. He hadn’t had to ask about what happened, he had known simply from the wounded expression on his brother’s uninjured form. His brother went on living, though he didn’t truly survive. It hurt him with every single day he watched, the fact that Hashirama was hurting...and the fact that Madara was gone.

Truly gone, not simply out of the village. Tobirama had WANTED him out of the village, wanted it to be safe, safer than it was with the dangerous man in it. There were plenty of other dangerous people of course, but only one of them ever had the faintest chance of killing his brother.

In the end, he did kill him. Hashirama was the one that stabbed Madara’s heat, but he didn’t come back to the village alive any more than Madara did. Tobirama resented Madara for it, deeply. More so, even, when he sat at his brother’s deathbed. 

He’d finally learned the truth behind the years and years of pain he witnessed Hashirama go through. Tobirama thought a lesser man – himself even – could never have kept going the way he did. Only on his deathbed did he have the courage to ask his elder brother his reasons.

Tobirama knew better though. He had always been watching, his brother, even Madara. He knew Hashirama was mistaken in his beliefs, that he had always seen things in Madara that were never there...yet, he would have never breathed a word of it to Hashirama.

His elder brother died happy, if foolish. Happy, even in pain. Tobirama hoped he would be so lucky one day, when his own time came, to have loved so deeply, and even so foolishly. He rather thought he wouldn’t. He wasn’t the type for it. He knew love of course, but he was certain a love like his brother’s and Madara’s wasn’t in his fate...and he was never powerful enough to change fate.

He didn’t see the sense in trying. When his time came, he died a good death, saving his team, shinobi he cared for deeply, ones he had been sworn to protect. In the end, it wasn’t them he thought of though – it was his brother and Madara and the dance they had devoted their whole life to that he thought of in his last moments. He saw no shame in remembering Hashirama’s dream in his last moments...and part of his dream had always been Madara.

After all, Tobirama had always been watching and he’d seen so much. Hashirama wasn’t the only one who had seen that fire burning deep behind the Sharingan, in the end. Tobirama died sort-of-happy, and sort-of-in-pain too.


End file.
